Ebony Floors

So, here we are on my due date deciding what color to stain the floors. According to her grandmas, that little Miss Cupcake is waiting for her room to be finished. If that is the case, then little miss is going to be waiting quite a while.

Since we started this project, I have been obsessed with doing dark ebony floors. I think that they can be absolutely gorgeous -- when done correctly. I love the rich, depth of color and the the contrast with light walls and cabinets. We've been struggling to find the right stain, however. The color needs to be deep for it to be convincing. Otherwise, I think it looks kind of cheap and tawdry. And that's not exactly the look we're going for, now is it?

I think that the top picture is about where we're going to end up. It still has a lot of nice rich browns in it, but it's not black like the bottom picture. And it's also not too red or orange. We've been doing lots of sample patches upstairs underneath where the cabinetry is. I think we're pretty settled on Minwax Ebony. Tomorrow though I'm gonna go check out the Mohawk stain with die in it. How's that for excitement?

Movin' on Out

After all that effort, we have now rented a place down South and will be renting out our beautiful baby. We are petrified to do so, but it's what we've decided to do. I am also exactly 7 months pregnant again! That seems to be the marker for when I become inspired to pack up the whole house and move. Our departure is very bittersweet. Photos of the final house sans boxes to come, I promise!

The Final Inspection

We passed! Holy crap. We can't believe it. He was here for less than 1/2 hr. We feared it so much and now it's over. What do we do now?! It's been five years since we took out our first permit. Oh, boy.

Front Door in Progress

She's supposed to be done by Friday...

Doors in The Mission

Our current door

Other doors in the neighborhood

Here's the door we've finally chosen.

Of course, it's not a stock door. Even if it was, I'm sure that they wouldn't have it in the obscure size that our current front door opening has become. We've ordered it from this custom door place in Bernal Heights. It's the kind of place that has Pau kind of hours where the main guy that you have to talk to in order to order a door is only there during certain hours, but when you show up during those hours, he is never ever there. After four tries, J managed to connect with him and order the door. Three weeks was what he promised, so that probably means...6? We shall see!

Broken Leaf

Dear Devoted Readers (of whom I think there are three), I've missed you! It's been 4.5 months since I last posted. Once we finally moved back upstairs, most of the finishing details came to a grinding halt. We've just been enjoying living in a house with lights in almost every room and running hot and cold water. But now it's time to get back to business: our front door and the right door knob. It sets the tone for all the renovation that's happened inside, so I'd like for it to be right. I finally found a pristine entry set with Broken Leaf pattern that came out in 1887. Here it is:

Forgiven

The pods were delivered on Friday and then they disappeared this morning. Genius. Did you ever think this day would come? I have nothing but rave reviews for this whole storage pod business. It's awesome. As much as I love U-Haul, I love not going there even more.

Unpacking is going to be a breeze thanks to my superior labeling technique.

Queen M explores the contents of the pods.

Amazingly enough, Queen M appears to have forgiven me for the torment that we've put her through. She quickly settled in for a cuddle with us.

Both kitties also had a lovely afternoon nap in the sun. Those two have become better buds than either of them will ever admit. This is also a sneak peak at another Craiglist special -- check out those pokey chairs, my sweets. Yes, they are Twister meets Romper Room and I love them!

Uninvited Guest

The kitchen smelled a little last night, but I though it was just the two dirty dishes in the sink. This morning, I took the Cupcake out to get one of her many shots. When I returned with my traumatized child, I nearly threw up at the door. The smell was nothing short of extraordinary. It was really and truly the most rancid thing I have ever smelled in my life. It's the kind of smell that is so powerful that even while you are refraining from breathing, it still gets to you. It almost knocks you over. It goes down your throat and makes you want to vomit more than you can possibly imagine. I threw my bag down and took Cupcake upstairs.

I realized that Mikey had died the night before. Mikey was a mouse that we had trapped under the stove. He would visit me almost every night. He would stop in like clockwork to peruse the garbage can for dinner. He found his way in through the garage and then through one of the holes for the water lines into the cabinet. We haven't been able to sheet rock up that back side of the studio yet, so there are ways for a little fellow to find his way in. After we finally saw the little fellow make a run for it from the dish washer to the stove, we stuffed towels under the stove to block him in so that we could figure out how to lure him out in the light of day. Mikey didn't like that. We did have every intention of helping him find his way back out to the delightful streets of the Mission District in which we live. We thought we had time. Mikey was a plump little fellow, but he didn't have the stamina.

So, the ridiculous thing was that I found myself with my newborn baby upstairs not knowing quite what to do with myself. You see, the problem is that we're waiting until this coming weekend to actually start sleeping up there so that the polyurethane odor can completely disappear. It's almost all gone, but there's no reason to be exposing the Cupcake to these things if we don't have to. I don't mind her spending short periods of time up there, but sleeping up there is a different story. I found myself having to choose between the rancid studio downstairs with the non toxic mousey smells or the certainly toxic but not that disagreeable of a scent of the lingering polyurethane. Keep in mind that the Cupcake was also feeling a little cranky from her shot. Poor girl. So, we attempted to run errands, jogged back for naps upstairs and finally retired to the studio in the evening with the air filters going full blast and the door wide open. I think that the smell has improved, but I honestly don't really know. I've been back for several hours now, so who knows. I probably smell like a dead mouse. All that I could think each time that I would attempt to venture back into the studio to get various things during the day was, why did they go to the trouble of water-boarding people when they could just pipe in the smell of a pile of dead mice?

The Final Dump Run

Here are J & L last weekend after one of their final dump runs. The number of times that we've been to the dump is rather impressive. Luckily, this is a task that I did not have to participate in anymore once I got pregnant. Can't say that I missed it very much, but it is kind of a cool place. They even featured the SF dump on an episode of Dirty Jobs once. If you've never been, you should go some time to see where all of your garbage disappears to every week. The best time to go is right after Christmas when you can see the giant --and I mean GIANT-- mound of discarded Christmas trees. I digress. L has been with us a long time working on the house. All the way back to when we were endlessly digging in the studio to get rid of more and more dirt. He's helped us every step of the way and has never complained about any of the crazy things that we've asked him to do -- probably because J was right there working with him most of the time. But we are incredibly grateful to him for all of his help.

The Queen

The Queen contemplates the hell that we've put her thru since last May and can't quite believe that the Door-to-Door storage pods are coming back TOMORROW. Soon, The Queen will have her torn up chair by the front window again so that she can curl up and soak in the sun all day. She will snack when she needs to and drink water at her leisure. And she will also be the recipient of hourly pats and cuddles. We're coming home, girls. We're comin' home!

Poly Poly

Here are the floors with one more coat of polyurethane on them. I'm glad we waited so that they could buff out any scratches. It's pretty incredible, however, that when we pulled up the paper that covered the floors that there wasn't any serious damage. It's so hard protecting the work that you've done while trying to do more!

We did one more coat on Saturday to finish it off. Here is our first piece of real furniture in the house in Cupcake's room!

This is the crib that I insisted on buying about 6 months ago when this nice baby store in Marin was going out of business. It weighed about two tons and sat in the backyard in its cardboard box all these many months through many a rain storm. Amazingly enough, it and the range are in great condition. Hoorah!

Direct Mail Convert

Never in my life have I actually bought something from a random piece of direct mail. Well, last week the Reggio Registers catalog appeared in our mailbox just as I was about to start looking for some. All that they sell is registers and exactly the ones that we wanted! If only every purchase had been so easy in this process. I ordered of 5 of these cast iron grilles and think that they'll look great with those dark floors. It just cracks me up that somewhere in someone's database, I've been labeled as a good target for heating grilles. I'm so far gone now that I'm finding that amusing, aren't I?

Running Water & Toilets!!

The appliances are in place. The stove is on the furniture dolly right now so that we can continue to clean it up. This Craigslist special had to live in the backyard for a while, so the burners are a bit rusted. The gas is hooked up though and the pot filler ready for action! J will finish installing the hood this weekend too. The fridge (my other Craigslist special) is ready to hooked up for ice cube action. So fancy! There is running water in the kitchen and both baths!


These chandeliers came from P's garage. The floors are revealed! Haven't seen them for awhile.
We're putting two more coats of poly on the floors at the end of this week, so we covered the baseboards so that it wouldn't slop over.
Hello, glorious tub!!
Mistress of the house.
Things left to do before we can move back in:

install master toilet, shower heads, cabinet hardware, door knobs, light fixtures, range hood, hook up waste on 2nd tub, install second water heater, 2 coats of poly on the floors

Not bad! About 1.5 weeks to go!

The Sink and a Car Jack

Leave it to J to use a car jack to put in a sink. It was dang heavy, so I'm glad he did it to try and preserve his back. Here are J and JJ bending down to position it just right and here's the glorious sink. I think she looks great. They popped in the faucet for effect. It's not hooked up yet, but I think she looks dandy!

Don't Watch

We were finally able to have some guys pick up our fridge (the one I bought off of Craigslist last January) from JJ's house where he kindly stored it in his garage for us all this time. I shouldn't have watched them do it, but I couldn't help it. It wasn't as bad as watching them bring the tub inside, but it was pretty crazy. They had one of those automated stair dollies, but it was really sounding as if it was on its' last legs. The motor really didn't sound like it would make it to the top of the stairs. Isn't that the kind of thing that you double-check before heading out for delivery?

Tiling Is Complete!

They finished the tile work on Wednesday. I love it!

The poor counter guy spent about 1.5 hours trying to improve the look of that seam on the counters. I'm still not thrilled with it, but I think it's an improvement. It looks better in the pic than it does in person.